This section describes approaches that could be employed, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or employed. Hence, unless explicitly specified otherwise, any approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application, and any approaches described in this section are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Cloud-based application services (e.g., web server services, database services, etc.) are based on providing a user access to an instance of a virtualized application that is executed within a data center. One example deployment of a “virtualized application” (vApp) can be based on installation of the vApp within a virtualized operating system, for example an instance of Ubuntu executed within a virtual machine (e.g., commercially available from VMware, Inc., Palo Alto, Calif.) that is deployed within a data center. Part of the installation of the vApp includes a file system of the virtualized operating system establishing a path for reaching the vApp within the virtualized operating system; hence, a user can reach the vApp via the virtualized operating system based on the file system contained in the virtualized operating system. Consequently, instantiation of the vApp is integrally combined with access to the vApp, such that the vApp is instantiated within the virtualized operating system in response to a user of the virtualized operating system requesting access to the vApp.
Attempts to disassociate the instantiation of the vApp from the access to the vApp has required network administrators to manually provision a network path for reaching each instance of the virtual machine executing the vApp, such that each network path requires manually connecting (“binding”) a corresponding sequence of network services (e.g., firewall service instance, load balancer instance, etc.) to the virtual machine.